


Duane Street Anthology

by LittleDelanceyDoll



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Multi, not in all of the chapters but some, will include passing mentions of death and rape and violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 08:37:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8571715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDelanceyDoll/pseuds/LittleDelanceyDoll
Summary: In the city of Brooklyn— one of the largest in the world at its prime— there sits a quiet spot where harlots lie next to strike leaders, rich girls lie next to pauper boys, and a murderer unknowingly lies next to his victim.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is loosely based on the concept of Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters.

In the city of Brooklyn— one of the largest in the world at its prime— there sits a quiet spot where harlots lie next to strike leaders, rich girls lie next to pauper boys, and a murderer unknowingly lies next to his victim.

Their names are Rosalie, Jack, Violet, Christopher, Nigel, and Elizabeth.

Great judges lie next to great bakers, a poetess lies next to a moralist, and a king forever sleeps next to his queen.

Their names are Edward, Josephine, Maire, Bryant, Seán, and Anna.

In the quiet spot, a graveyard full of plots and voices, where lives untangle themselves from one another until the great city they lived in is stripped bare to its rottenness and brokenness.

There lies the bankers, the queens, the beggars, the drunkards, the Irish, the Italian, the Dutch, the orphans, the leaders, the followers, the dead, and the gone.

All are sleeping in a soundless sleep that shakes the living to their core.

All are sleeping in a quiet spot, in a city that once was known as one of the largest in the world.

All are sleeping in New York City.


	2. Caoilainn O'Shaughnessy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of Rape and Miscarriage in this one

I was fifteen when I was arrested for vagrancy.  

My father, a good catholic man, was in prison for beating our landlord half to death  

After he found that the devil was sneaking into his daughter's bedroom when his wife was ill.

 My mother died when I was young, taken by consumption.  

I went into the prison a child, the church I had called home leaving me naïve on the ways of the world.

 The warden, taking it upon himself to teach the children of his prison, took me after paying off the guards to leave 

(As Absalom took Tamar, in his most heinous way) 

And I lost what innocence I had brought with me on the cold floor of his office.  

He cut my sentence to silence me,

 For who would believe anything other than I was a harlot who slept with the warden to go home.

 Three months later, I was faced with the most awful pains, 

And I found myself screaming out as blood ran down my leg.

 Tell me, chara, have you been by the tombstone of little Patrick O'Dale,

 A babe who did not survive to even breathe his first breath?

That is my baby boy, I carved the clover into his tombstone after the nuns I went to  

Hid my " ** _shame_** " without asking if they could.

 How I wish I could have seen his eyes… 

Perhaps they would have been blue like mine and my mother's.


End file.
